


Best Because It's Fleeting

by ladyknightley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 07:31:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5366624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknightley/pseuds/ladyknightley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angelina misses the Quidditch World Cup because her father is ill, and it's still taking a toll come Christmas, too. Angsty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Because It's Fleeting

**Author's Note:**

> This is very angsty and features talk about illness and death and whatnot, so if you choose to skip it, I won't be at all offended! The others are much fluffier, I promise :) Title credit: 'This Time of Year' by Katie Costello, which I highly recommend.

“How was it?”

“Better. Worse.” Angelina set her bag down on the kitchen table. “Mentally, he was so much better than Wednesday,” she clarified. “He knew who I was at all times, and he was the sharpest I’ve seen him in about a month. But physically, he was a lot worse. The cold has really taken hold now, it’s on his chest, they’re talking about pneumonia...”

“What are they doing?” George asked. “What can  _we_  do?”

“They’re trying a new medicine; they did explain it to me but right now I can’t face going through it again,” she said, sitting down. “My worry is it will mess with his brain, his mind. He did so well today. It felt like I had my Dad back. But that’s just a one off. He’s deteriorating fast. And with this new medication...what if it makes him worse?”

George sat down at the table opposite her and grasped her hands, matching her serious expression. The door to the flat opened, one of the children arriving back, and they were hit with a blast of Christmas music from down in the shop. He waited for it to be over. “If it makes him worse, they’ll stop it,” he said, “or find some other medications for his mind, or...or something. I’m not a Healer. But they generally know what they’re doing; they’ll monitor him closely. And it’s good that he knew who you were.”

Angelina nodded once. “He didn’t ask for Roxanne, this time,” she said heavily. “I don’t know if that’s because he remembers that she’s dead, or just that he doesn’t remember her at all.”

“Did he ask about our Roxy? And Fred?” George asked.

“Yes, so I think—”

“Mum!” Roxanne bellowed from down the corridor. “Where are my pyjamas?”

Angelina squeezed her eyes closed for one brief second. “On the box outside the bathroom, sweetie,” she called back brightly.

“Not those ones! The other ones!”

She closed her eyes again, unable to picture any pyjamas. Or, really, anything that wasn’t her father, lying in that bed, looking so cold and empty.

“Do you want me to...” George murmured, and she opened her eyes again, focusing on him.

“I’ve found them!” Roxanne cried. “Can I have the red blanket from your room?”

“What for?”

“Dom’s birthday! I’m packing for the sleepover!”

“Oh,  _fuck_ ,” Angelina mouthed.

“Take the blanket,” George called. “I’ll be up to apparate you in twenty minutes, so make sure you’re ready!”

“Thanks, Dad!” A door slammed.

“How did I forget that?” Angelina said. “She’s only had the same bloody birthday for...a present! I completely forgot to get her a present!”

“Taken care of,” George assured her. “Roxanne went with me and we chose a scarf and hat, and she wrapped it. Done.”

Angelina swallowed the tide of rising panic. “Good,” she said. “Thanks. Right.”

“Roxie’s going to the sleepover tonight, and Fred’s at Harry and Ginny’s, but he’ll be back for dinner,” George continued. “Ron’s got the floor today and tomorrow, so I’m around for whatever you need.”

“I need a large gin and tonic with no tonic,” Angelina said. “And then maybe a Firewhiskey chaser.”

“At least wait until I’ve dropped Roxy off,” George said. “We can squeeze something in before dinner. A something or two, in fact.”

“Dinner,” Angelina stated. “What’s—“

“I shall cook us some takeaway,” George said firmly.

“Okay. And I need to organise tomorrow’s dinner—”

“May I suggest: takeaway, the sequel?”

Roxanne opened and closed the door that led down to the shop again, and there was another blast of seasonal music, replete with jingling bells.

“Christmas shopping,” Angelina sighed. “I haven’t even  _thought_  about it.”

“Wonderwitch product for everyone who likes make up,” George said quickly. “Wheezes product for everyone who likes pranking.”

“And for people who like both?”

“I don’t know...trick lipstick?”

Her mouth did something that might have been a smile. “Seriously. I haven’t done anything,” she said. “I’ve not bought a single present.”

“There’s still two weeks before the big day,” George said reasonably. “Two and half, really. You’ve got this.  _We’ve_  got this.”

“I know, but—” The door opened and closed for a third time, piping Christmas tunes into the room once again. She pressed a hand to her forehead.

“Okay, look,” George said. “Everyone knows what’s going on. They don’t expect—they’ve  _never_  expected!—fancy presents. You know, we can always ask all my siblings to get something from us for their kids; they know what they’d like better than us, it’s—”

“It’s not just the presents,” Angelina sighed. She extracted her hands from his and leaned back. “I know that. It’s just...I haven’t got a single thing for Roxanne or Freddie yet. I haven’t even thought about Christmas, except in the context of, for months, the Healers were telling me that Dad would be lucky to see Hallowe’en. And now here we are. Christmas is in two weeks. And I thought, I really thought, that we’d get one more with him, that we’d be lucky. But this chest infection...” She bit her lip. “And never mind about what presents am I going to get the kids. How am I going to tell them their Grandad is dying? No amount of gifts would make up for that.”

“Love, they know he’s ill,” he said soothingly. “They know—”

“They don’t know anything about his mental degeneration,” Angelina said. “And as for his illness, they think he’s got a mild but very contagious illness, so it’s not a good idea for them to be visiting, though he sends his love.”

“Which I’m sure he does,” George said quickly. “It’s not  _all_  a lie.”

“Oh,  _God_ ,” groaned Angelina. “We should’ve...said something before now. So they’re prepared when they need to...to say goodbye.”

“Two things,” George said. “And you won’t want to hear the first, and I’m sorry, but: they’ve definitely picked up on  _something_  being wrong. I know they’re our spawn, but they’re not idiots.” This raised the ghost of a smile on her face, and George took this as a good sign and ploughed on. “Fred asked me the other day if you were okay, because you seem so stressed all the time. I told him you were worried about Grandad being poorly, and that this was a busy time of year at work, so that wasn’t helping. And he accepted that, but they’re not exactly going to be shocked when you tell them that there’s something bad going on. They know that.”

“But what am I going to say? I shouldn’t have kept his memory loss a secret for so long, it wasn’t right to hide it from them when—”

“You did what you could to keep them happy,” George said very firmly. “Like you had any other choice. As for what you’re going to say, we’ll need to be honest, but that doesn’t mean we need to go into, you know, graphic detail. Like, they know that their Dad had a twin but he died in the war. But they don’t know the details about...about the wall and...they don’t need to.”

He swallowed, and Angelina leaned over, squeezed his hand once, hard, then stood up and walked over to the window. He caught his breath, trying to pull himself back from there. Angelina needed him. She’d given him so much, over the years. He could give it back now.

He went over to the window and wrapped his arms around her, closing his eyes tightly as she leaned into him. The noise from the shop had died away, and their kitchen felt warm and cosy; it was peaceful and quiet and they could almost forget that—

His eyes jerked open again as Angelina gasped in shock.

“What is it?” he asked, panicked, half-expecting to see one of those horrible notes from the hospital that were appearing more and more frequently in their home, requesting her presence immediately in re: patient JOHNSON, T. M. V. But when he looked down at her, she was smiling, more relaxed and happy than she’d seemed in months.

“Look,” she said, pointing out of the window, “it’s snowing!”

Sure enough, white flakes were starting to fall softly from the sky; as they watched, shoppers in Diagon Alley started to notice it too, and they looked up, pointing and laughing, calling to their friends and family to come and see. It wasn’t sticking, it was too fine of a powder for that, and by morning, every trace would be gone. But it was the first snow of the year, and it had a certain magic to it that went beyond spells and potions and the rest. Strangers were talking to each other in the street; children playing, sticking their tongues out to taste it. And though it wouldn’t last, for this moment, it didn’t have to.  

Above it all, George and Angelina watched it fall from the window of the flat above the shop. She nestled into him, and he wrapped his arms more tightly around her.

It wasn’t a Christmas miracle. When it stopped, when they drew apart, her father would still be slowly dying and forgetting all his family. There would still be jobs to do. They would still have to tell their children that Grandpa Johnson wasn’t going to get better, and he wasn’t going to know who they were. And through all of that, they would still have to put up a tree, buy presents, sing all the songs like everything was normal. The snow didn’t change that.

But it did give them a moment’s peace, George reflected. A short time where they could, if not forget, rest. Perhaps it wasn’t a Christmas miracle, but it was enough of one. A Christmas quarter-miracle, containing just enough magic to get them through to the next one.

And so it would do.


End file.
